In my mind, a master is what the public percieves when they think of a blackbelt.

In basic terms it means certified bad ass, using an organized fighting system. How do describe it, I don't know but I know it when I see it.

Grand Master, to me is an honorary rank, it's more about years of service in an orginazation then any particular skill level. But you can't be a grand master unless you were a master, and that means you were handing BB's their perverbial butts on a regular basis.

An example of a Master (even though he did not hold the rank) was a tournament I was at back in '91. One Mr. Smith entered black belt Kumite and the organizers asked him to enter the Master Division. He said but I am not master rank, but they said no one else will enter if they have to fight you. (these are seasoned BB's btw).

So even though he was not technically a master rank, he was what I would call a master. His skill was so advanced other legit BB, didn't even want to try.

On a side note, their was no Master Division at the tournament, so basically he won by default and then when it was time for the Grand Champion Kumite the BB division winner bowed out.

I tell the story ti illustrate what I think a master rank is, but I don't want it to appear that Mr. Smith was a superman, he was just a person who trained very hard for very long time to the point where he was highly respected and even a bit feared. We all know people like that, they are just really good and we wonder if we can ever achieve that level of skill.

200 students has nothing to do with TKD or mastery of skill. It has to do with TK Dough. the art of making money for yourself and the orgainization. Nothing worng with that but its business not martial arts

eternally in our organization, but seriously though, I have seen Jhoon Rhee just last year speed break. That man is a Grand-master.

Well that may be, but the reason I think GM Rhee is a grandmaster is how he conducts himself, what he pushes & what he teaches. He is an amazing man & most desreving of the title & talented on top of it. But that part has little to do with my utmost respect for him. JMHO

>>>Some of the requirements to being allowed to become a Master are tested for 6th dan.full time instructor (4th dan requirement) with 200 active students (5th dan requirement) <<<

This is a Pyramid scheme, which like all pyramid schemes is destined to fail under it's own weight. Some will never advance to this level by virtue of the fact that the pie will never be big enough. Example. 10 Seniors each have 10 long time students able to reach this goal in 15 years. Thats 100 instructors with 20 thousand active students. In another 15 years each of them have 10 more. 1000 Instructors with 200,00 active stiudents . In 15 years each of those 1000 have 10 more, thats 2 million active students from the ten at the top of the pyramid.

I have never met I think someone above a fourth degree who was not teaching many students, and who haden't had at least some of those students reach black belt. For me, the ranks of 1st-4th degree are open to all practitioners, but nobody except long time teachers and "givers-back" should be getting 5th degrees and above. The 7th degrees and above are almost all reserved for the directors of organisations like the ITF in my experience. For instance, there are two ITF 8th degrees in England that I know of, master Ellis and Master Nardizzi, both of whom are representatives for ITF-V in England. Of course, I could be wrong, so apologies if there is another ITF-V 8th degree I don't know about.